Black Country Élites

The Exercise of Authority in an Industrialized Area, 1830-1900

Richard H. Trainor

Description

Black Country Elites is a study of the people who ran Victorian industrial towns; it also examines the institutions, policies, rituals, and networks these urban elites deployed to cope with urban growth, social unrest, and relative economic decline. Concentrating on a particularly grimy district of the industrial Midlands, the book demonstrates the surprisingly great resources, coherence, sophistication and impact of the area's mainly middle class leaders, who were well linked to regional and national power centers. The strength of this provincial industrial elite suggests the need to reexamine the influential view that Victorian Britain's social development was dominated by London and by land, the professions and finance.

Black Country Élites

The Exercise of Authority in an Industrialized Area, 1830-1900

Richard H. Trainor

Reviews and Awards

"His study of the rise of a confident, largely successful, and proudly heterogeneous Black Country elite can unquestionably take its place beside the major urban and regional studies of Victorian England."--American Historical Review

"Trainor's study of the Black Country elites provoke[s] a rehearing, and furthermore it indicates the robustness of detailed studies of local exercise of authority within the changing field of British social history."--Journal of Social History

"An extremely detailed and thorough examination of the authority wielded by individuals holding leadership posts in the major institutions of the Black Country...Richard Trainor intends his book to be a contribution to the role that the leaders of the industrial provinces played in Victorian society, and indeed, it is a valuable addition to the literature on this subject."--Albion